Greased Up

Last night I was talking to one of my very favorite poets -- people. I told him, very briefly, about this project -- told him I was imagining a book of poems called "oil." He started laughing immediately -- and we began to imagine cover art with voluptuous breasts covered in... yes, OIL.

It's dark and rainy and everyone I know is in a crappy mood. A good day for a story about oil-wrestling!

Okay -- so here's a first hand account of a oil-wrestling match in Seattle -- I'm not linking anything today for fear of actually being enlisted to write for Playboy -- which, I have to say, after three years as an adjunct professor, would be hard to pass up.

The girls entered the ring and had baby oil poured onto them and spread over their bodies by the two ring girls, then the match began. They were tentative at first, trying to get used to the unsure footing and being gentle with each other. But as the rounds progressed, with the raucous crowd cheering them on, they went at each other with the fire and energy of a catfight, trying to put moves on each other and take each other down. The action also got a lot wilder as the night went on, with contestants getting each other on all fours, straddling each other, and trying to grab hold of each others' shiny, oily arms, legs, boobs and butts. The ring girls added to the fun by the giving the contestants spankings whenever they came close to the edge of the ring. One ring girl was eventually pulled onto the mat by both wrestlers for a sexy wrestling threesome.

...

"I just wanted the chance to be greased up, mostly naked, and be pressed up against my homegirl! It sounds like an erotic experience every woman should have the chance to try." The petite, blue-eyed brunette also described herself, for the benefit of the fellas on CV, as "5'3", with blue cat eyes and lickable lips, small boobs but a ghetto booty, and happily single but available to the right man, if he can rock my world in bed."


I started looking for the health effects of baby oil. I couldn't find any -- but we know, of course, that baby oil is a petroleum product. It will seal off all breath in your skin -- at very least.

I may be the last person to know this, but I didn't know that baby oil erodes Latex. As in eats away at condoms in as little as 90 seconds -- again, no links today, sorry. That pretty well freaks me out -- this product that so many of us used to slather all over ourselves for sunning our showers -- as if embalming...

Baby oil is also recommended as a better smelling substitution for googone, removing tape and adhesives.

Years ago, I stopped drinking Coke because I learned that it's used on old cars for rust removal. Sometimes it's just not that hard to infer what shouldn't be in close contact...

In Turkey they wrestle with olive oil! For crying out loud the US is so confused.


link

Okay, well, I learned something today. And am even in a little better mood.

My Follow Through

Last night a friend asked if how I choose the stories I write about -- if I really look for them in the morning. I do -- I'm fascinated by the subconscious and the sleepy and the unfolding of my own interest. Some mornings it's really hard though --
I've been looking for an hour again.

On the good news front, the Federal Government has stepped in on the Greka situation I talked about a few days ago. They will clean up then sue the company for reimbursement. The spill is horrible, and the concern is that the spill is on its way to federal waters.

A few weeks ago Andrew Revkin wrote a fascinating blog on DOT Earth (NYTimes) about the state of media and the covering of global climate change and politics.

But here's what catches my eye. An article from a small paper in Danbury CT.

The article starts out talking about how people can't pay their heat bills this year. Well, that was to be expected. Some clients are behind thousands of dollars in oil bills, and seniors are adding oil to their list of trade offs as they balance the importance of medication and food...

"On Monday, before appearing at the news conference, Mitchell said a senior citizen stopped by his office and asked to have only 100 gallons of oil delivered to his home.

'If we had filled his tank, that cost would have taken his whole Social Security check,' [said John Mitchell, who started Mitchell Fuel Co. Inc.in South Windsor 50 years ago.]"

Okay -- all of this we knew. What's interesting, though, is what is folded into this article:

"Meehan [ president of the Portland-based home heating oil company] and a group of fuel dealers appeared at the state Capitol on Monday with U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., to support federal legislation that aims to remove the speculation in the energy futures market. An Energy Department official this month said market speculation on energy prices may have added as much as 10 percent to crude oil costs."

There has been lots of talk that the current increase in oil prices is based largely on speculation -- on fear and guesses that the supply of oil will be tightening soon. And when that happens people buy and trade on the belief that the price of the futures will also go up. I was actually an economic reporter -- and studied this stuff in grad school -- but that was a long time ago, so I'm sorry if I've somehow oversimplified this into nonexistence...

At any rate, the bill proposes that people who buy oil have to take possession of the oil: You can't trade on the price increase -- you have to want the goods.

"[Mitchell] said there have been difficult years, such as the oil shortage during the 1970s.

"But never have I seen conditions that have so flaunted the reality of what is supply and demand and the pricing of this product," he said."

It's an interesting thought. I can't imagine that would ever happen -- what the bill suggests is overturning the American stock market system -- but interesting, none the less.

What is real -- what is physical -- what is tangible. Doesn't it seem like so often our lives revolve around some idea -- some structured system of what we believe the future is going to look like? Don't we so often get caught up in some reality that if we settled down would have little bearing on the physical world we live in?

What if we did that with everything in our lives -- insisted on truth -- on evidence -- on follow through...

One Love

I've been interested in the rise of coal production -- I've noticed a few bad signs in my readings over the last few months -- law exemptions, plant openings... the kinds of murmurings that are single lines in disparate stories from time to time.

I wrote my favorite friendly climate scientist, Dr. Andrew Dessler to ask what he'd heard of late. All he said was that "coal production is an unmitigated disaster and should be halted immediately."

Of course, that's not what's happening.

A report from the Energy Information Administration, the official energy statistic site from the US government, projected coal production for the next many years. "In the IEO2007 reference case, world coal consumption increases by 74 percent over the projection period, from 114.4 quadrillion Btu in 2004 to 199.0 quadrillion Btu in 2030 (Figure 54). Coal consumption increases by 2.6 percent per year on average from 2004 to 2015, then slows to an average increase of 1.8 percent annually from 2015 to 2030."

Furthermore, " Although coal currently is the second-largest fuel source of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (behind oil), accounting for 39 percent of the world total in 2004, it is projected to become the largest source by 2010. The two key factors underlying the increase are a more rapid projected growth rate for world coal consumption than for oil consumption and the fact that carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy output are higher for coal than for oil or natural gas. In 2030, coal’s share of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions is projected to be 43 percent, compared with 36 percent for oil and 21 percent for natural gas. "



I still keep thinking of Dickens -- and illustrations from his books of coal filled air. (This is one of the originals from Bleakhouse.)

One of the biggest factors right now is China -- where the country is changing so rapidly and is searching for ways to keep up with their own population.

But all over people are seeking alternatives to oil. I was reading another story in the Times today about wood heat -- it seems that all over the North East folks are dragging out their wood stoves to combat heating prices. Sounds good to me -- when I was younger, I lived with my mom in the middle of nowhere Maine -- we used an old Russian fireplace for heat -- a wood burning chimney that heated the whole house by conducting heat through bricks and tile floors.

"Air pollution is still a major concern, particularly with wood boilers. A 2006 report from the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, a nonprofit association of Northeast air quality agencies, found that average particulate emissions from one outdoor wood boiler equaled that of 22 wood stoves, 205 oil furnaces or as many as 8,000 natural gas furnaces."

That I did not know. I didn't want to know it, either.


(From A Tale of Two Cities.)

Yesterday I talked a little bit about the pitfalls of two opposing motivations finding themselves with the same goal -- I was referring to the desire to find an alternative for oil -- those who would like to find an economic relief from the price of oil and those who would like to find an environmental relief from the price of oil may both move to further the production of ethanol. Still, because their motivations are different, should something go wrong, one group may no longer find the solution palatable. What then?

My friend Debbie said the question reminded her of a protest she saw in downtown Boston a few years ago -- there, Orthodox Jews and Nazi skinheads were protesting along side each other in condemnation of Israel. The Jews believe that Israel is an error because it is the requirement of Jews to live in peace with all living things. Not so much the Nazis.

Is one group glad of the others' success? Do the ends justify the means?

For me, it made me think of a very different situation -- but one, too, where opposing motivations wind up in collaboration of sorts. If one person is pursuing love and another is pursuing sex and the two find themselves together...


(Bleakhouse: The morning.)

What we want is not the same. What we need ...

One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
Hear the children crying (One Love)
Hear the children crying (One Heart)
Sayin' give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Sayin' let's get together and feel all right

Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (One Love)
There is one question I'd really like to ask (One Heart)
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own?
Believe me

One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
As it was in the beginning (One Love)
So shall it be in the end (One Heart)
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
One more thing

Let's get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (One Love)
So when the Man comes there will be no no doom (One Song)
Have pity on those whose chances grove thinner
There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation

Sayin' One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
I'm pleading to mankind (One Love)
Oh Lord (One Heart)

Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let's get together and feel all right

-- Bob Marley

Unreportable Warfare

This morning, about oil, I learned that if you burn the pools from an oil spill and seal off the hole in the earth, you have only made things worse. The burning releases fumes, vapors and toxins, and leaves a denser crude behind.

Still, this is a common method of clean up for many villages in Nigeria, according to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“The land is devastated. The drinking water and streams are polluted. As it rains, we use the rain water but cannot drink it, because even that is full of crude oil,” youth leader Amstel Monday Ebarakpor told IRIN.

“At every groundwater intrusion, you see seepage. Sometimes you can see oil sheen on drinking water,” he told IRIN. “Crude will be there for the next 50 years.”

Just to repeat: Sometimes you can see an oil sheen on the drinking water.

On 25 January the chairman of the government’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, Bamidele Ajakaiye, told Nigeria’s Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology that there are 1,150 abandoned oil spill sites in the Niger Delta region. Many, communities say, are cleaned like the one in Kedere - if at all.

There seem to be a lot of factors at work.

The largest is the growing unrest in that region. I've written about Nigeria before... Local people steal oil from pipelines to sell on the black market or to heat their homes -- as one would imagine, this is not a very safe practice. Also sabotage against the oil companies is occurring frequently as communities protest the discrepancy between what is being taken from the land and what is being given back to the people of the land. Also -- pipelines are really old. Also -- in the realm of things that are never reported -- doesn't it stand to reason that if the huge oil companies are responding to guerrilla style warfare that by killing and crippling the surrounding lands and people they would be engaging in their own warfare...

Unreportable warfare.

I noticed in the news coverage last year the language of the stories reported made the issue sound very much like a band of thieves and hooligans were set on messing things up for everyone. It concerned me then -- and then the coverage fell off all together. The UN report was picked up be Reuters, but I didn't see it in the Times, and a Google search didn't show it as appearing in any major newspaper.

President Bush will be traveling to Africa this month.

Posted today, on what looks to be a newsish site -- though I can't really decipher, because it's all in Portuguese (I think) -- is a letter to our President.

"Mr President:
Greetings from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) of Nigeria. We trust this letter will reach you and your entourage touring some African countries well.

MEND needs little introduction to you since you must have been briefed after the actions we have taken to address the injustice in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria may have affected the oil dependent American economy.

Your trip to Africa comes at an opportune time and indicates the soft spot you have for the people of this great continent. Africa is facing several on going conflicts, almost all are avoidable. Nigeria is at the verge of entering its own mega-conflict even though everyone seems to be in denial. When Nigeria erupts, the lava will spread so fast, far and wide that the human and economic catastrophe will dwarf Darfur."

The letter goes on to outline a proposal for action. It doesn't sound like the kind of letter I would be reading if I was president of the United States.

I wonder if President Bush will read this letter.

I wonder if oil is being used deliberately as chemical warfare.
But really, isn't it hard to imagine a group of pissed off American or European oil workers, hot and sick of being messed with, not saying...



Photo: Dulue Mbachu IRIN photo
Environmental damage from an oil spill in Kegbara-Dere in the Ogoni district of the Niger Delta. Residents say the spill is more than 10 years old and has not been cleaned up.

Be In Touch

There's an interesting article in the Times today -- it talks about how cowboys are looking out for the land all over the country --

''Look at this grass. If I don't take care of it, that's my livelihood,'' Nitschke said, kneeling as he examined foxtail shoots. ''We dress differently than the eco-folks, we probably vote differently, but in the end there's a lot of ways in which our core values are really close.''

Isn't it sweet -- the image of this cowboy bending down to touch a baby tree... The story says, usually, those who live off the land and those who seek to protect it are at odds...

Across the West, cattlemen and environmentalists have locked horns over grazing practices for decades. But increasingly, ranchers are buying into the idea that they have a role to play in protecting open space, be it through preserving private wildlands or promoting sustainable grazing techniques.

"Arizona state card."

Wealth does Arizona hold
In her mines and hearts of gold,
In her towering Canon Grand
Till she seems, 'The promised land'.
[1916]

Near Florida's Lake Okeechobee, the World Wildlife Fund has recruited ranchers to build ditches on their lands to improve wetlands habitat for threatened and endangered birds like the wood stork and crested caracara.

In Wyoming, the Audobon Society is trying to persuade oil and gas companies to pay ranchers to maintain sage brush expanses key to the survival of the sage grouse.

It's a strange sort of question -- what constitutes living off the land -- in harmony with -- in understanding of -- in cooperation with -- respecting...

In touch vs out of touch -- isn't it nice to think of skin involved in that interchange. In touch with one's surroundings. In touch with the earth. The people around us...

Hearts and Other Gushers

Well, I set out to be holidayish this morning. I tend to like Valentines Day -- my mother used to put out lots of sparkle and glitter and hearts and things -- also yesterday I really was sick of everyone.

But look what I found --
A few months ago in Houston there was a huge conference which put heart surgeons and oil industry researchers in the same room to brainstorm!

Pumps, valves, coursing liquid.

Everyone wants to be more efficient.
Everyone wants to be less intrusive.
Everyone knows that what they provide is crucial.

Pumping -- transferring -- embedded imposed passages -- corrosion -- clogged lines...

It's kind of cool -- all the power point material is on-line!

One presentation was called "Top 10 Reasons we Are Really in the Same Business." The number one reason was the cool uniforms. Can you imagine a room full of brain surgeons and oil executives laughing at slapstick power point presentations?

One new breakthrough in angioplasty is a bioabsorbable stent -- after six months the whole thing deteriorates and is absorbed into the body.

In one of the presentations Exxon says,

"The pumping system we use are familiar and have been around a long time. The challenge is in the techniques used to transfer energy to deeper pumps efficiently in the face of the increasingly hostile and sensitive environments we face."

Well -- they are Exxon, after all. Can't get too gushy.

Interesting to think about how one looks at their environment -- and how you behave in one you consider both hostile and fragile... I've known hostile and fragile people from time to time -- generally I try to stay away from them... especially on Valentine's Day.

I first came across this story on a blog titled, Applied Imagination. That's what's so cool -- just the idea of bringing people together to think together -- to parallel industries in a way most people would never think of. That's what Einstein did, wasn't it... people are pretty amazing...

Percentage of Fault Allocated

I couldn't even look at this at a normal hour today -- I'm at a bit of a loss, feeling like I've stumbled into some sort of gap in the project and also my own history that I'm not sure how to handle...

Anyway, I started looking through the NY Times cross referencing Brooklyn and lung disease. The thing is, I'm not really versed in computer assisted reporting, and the kind of project about Brooklyn I'm contemplating... well... I'm not sure I'm up for it.

February 26, 2007 The violinist and composer Leroy Jenkins, one of the pre-eminent musicians of 1970s free jazz, who worked on and around the lines between jazz and classical music, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 74 and lived in Brooklyn.

Larry Fink, 2005

Leroy Jenkins playing with the reunited Revolutionary Ensemble.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, said his wife, Linda Harris.

link

*

Donald M. Halperin, a former New York state senator who represented shorefront neighborhoods of Brooklyn for 23 years and then served briefly as Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's housing commissioner, died on Monday in Brooklyn. He was 60.

The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, Brenda Halperin.
link

*

COMPANY NEWS; CIGARETTE MAKER FOUND PARTLY RESPONSIBLE IN MAN'S DEATH
Published: December 19, 2003
link
A New York jury said yesterday that Brown & Williamson, the maker of Lucky Strike cigarettes, was partly responsible for a Brooklyn man's death from lung cancer. A six-person jury at New York Supreme Court in Brooklyn said the man, Harry Frankson, who smoked cigarettes for more than 40 years, was 50 percent at fault for his illness, while British American Tobacco, which has operated in the United States as Brown & Williamson, and other defendants held the rest of the blame. The case was brought by Gladys Frankson, Mr. Frankson's widow. The jury will reconvene on Jan. 7 to determine punitive damages. It awarded the plaintiff $350,000 in damages, which will be reduced by half because of the percentage of fault allocated to the plaintiff. The company said it expected the case to be reversed eventually.

I've talked a lot over these last few months about responsibility --
I think that cigarette companies do have a responsibility for selling -- making money on -- administering toxins. Tobacco is one of the only ingestible carcinogens still for sale in this country --
People also have a responsibility - that of choice and free will...

The Brooklyn spill happened, was not cleaned up and was not revealed. If the worse case scenario were true in, and lung disease skyrocketed in Green Point -- is still skyrocketing -- what does that mean? And to smokers? Would the oil companies then owe a percentage of the fault of death? Would cigarette companies be off the hook?

I still just can't quite get my mind around it --
the biggest oil spill in the country --
unnoticed
unattended to...
Could you examine the birds of Brooklyn? Are there any birds left in Brooklyn?

Out the kitchen window in the apartment where my father grew up you could see the tomato plants in the back few feet of yard...
food grown of toxic soil...
permeated
ingested.

It's Stunning

So...
over nearly a century, an estimated 20-30 million gallons of oil has leaked into the water and soil of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, NY. The story got some mounting attention in 2007, as lawsuits are prepared to combat inaction on the part of Exxon and five other companies involved in an enormous toxic waste situation. Read here here here and hear here.

A report this month from the Environmental Protection Agency suggested that the Newtown spill may be twice as large as first believed — some 30 million gallons, nearly three times the size of the Alaska spill. It has polluted the 4-mile strip of waterway and some 55 residential and commercial acres around it, gathering in subsurface reservoirs, mixing with groundwater, creating toxic vapors and and seeping, slowly but inexorably, into the creek. One major concern is the reported leakage of chemical vapor into homes.

Vapors into the homes... arsenic - lead... we have no idea what this means -- has meant to families to children over the years. What effect on families - family histories... could toxic fumes cause toxic behavior? Physical illness? Mental illness...

I've just returned home from a week in Brooklyn, and somehow it seems even closer -- Greenpoint, according to NPR is still home to Polish immigrants -- which is what it was 60 years ago, when the bulk of the spill occurred; which is what it was 60 years ago when my father and his brother Al were playing bloody knuckles and my grandmother and Ellie were standing on the stoop gossiping while the fresh kilbasi boiled inside... when we drank the water...

The spill, originally several times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil leak, resulted from an accident in the 1950s and lay undiscovered until 1978. In notices of intent to sue that were sent to the five companies, Andrew M. Cuomo, the state attorney general, said that so much oil had leaked into the creek that some samples of its sediment, when dried and weighed, were nearly one-tenth oil.

The notices also disclosed that an internal study by one of the companies found nearly 100 different pollutants in the creek water or sediment, including benzene, arsenic and lead.

Of course, the timing is... not for the Polish immigrants. Brooklyn is gentrifying. Already the brick row house my family sold a few decades ago for about $60,000 would be worth probably ten time that; imagine if it wasn't nestled in toxic waste...

“The Brooklyn-Queens waterfront has the potential to be New York’s Gold Coast, with sparkling towers, schools, parks and libraries,” said Eric Gioia, a City Council member whose Queens district abuts the creek. “Cleaning Newtown Creek is critical to that vision.”

Still the ability to ignore is amazing. On the NPR story, a carpet cleaner got Exxon to pay for a fan to ventilate his work area because the smell of oil was so strong.

"with the fans running we don't smell them [the fumes] -- with the fans running, I think they stay underground."

I love the language of that. With the fans running the fumes stay underground.

Brooklyn is home to the biggest oil disaster in this country. I read about this in October, and I've been trying to figure out how to make sense of it since then -- to put into some sort of context...

maybe there simply is none.

When I was about 12 the house across the street from my grandmother's burned to the ground. I wasn't allowed out on the stoop, but I stood at the window and watched it go up -- later I took a picture which is still hanging on my wall --

and the flames swallowed up what had been. And there were rumors of intent -- murmors of intent and neglect and what a pity

and we all stood and watched -- and the fire trucks came late -- and everything was destroyed.

Justice Is Blinded 2

I'm going to cheat today.

The article that caught my eye this morning is about a coal company. In my defense, I never do this -- in my other defense, this relates to a post earlier this week that was about oil -- and in my other other defense, coal and oil are inexorably linked, as the use of coal begins to rise based on the threat of oil supplies tightening...

Furthermore, it's about a court case -- and I don't think any discussion of a court case and an energy law stands alone against the backdrop of the Supreme Court, which this spring is slated to hear the damages case against Exxon Mobil for the Valdez crash.

“In West Virginia, there is a proverb that says that everything is political except politics, and that is personal,” said Conni Gratop Lewis, a retired lobbyist. -- The New York Times.

The story comes out of West Virginia, and has to do with a case that was thrown out in November -- a $50 million dollar fraud case against Massey Energy Corp. That judgment was declared on a 3-2 vote. The case is being reopened after photos surfaced of the chief justice and the CEO playing golf.

On Thursday, several plaintiffs in the case — mining companies that say they were driven out of business by Massey — filed a separate motion seeking the disqualification of a second judge in the original majority, Justice Brent D. Benjamin. Justice Benjamin was elected to the court in 2004 with the help of more than $3 million in advertisements and other support from Don L. Blankenship, Massey’s chief executive and Chief Justice Maynard’s dining companion in Monte Carlo.

The judges don't think there's a problem. They say they remain impartial -- and that the scrutiny is unwarranted. Two weeks ago, Massey settled another suit:

CHARLESTON, W.Va., Jan. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Massey Energy Company (NYSE: MEE) today announced that it has settled a Clean Water Act lawsuit filed in May 2007 on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The $20 million settlement avoids expensive litigation, resolves questions about the company's potential liability and enhances Massey's environmental protection efforts.

I said in the older post that the judgments in these cases were so high, they dwarfed the price of elections... it worse than that -- the profits of these energy companies dwarf the expenditure of governments. Massey alone holds $3 billion in assets -- with sales in the neighborhood of $200 million. Exxon Mobil made 39.5 billion in profits in 2006 -- and that was before the increases in oil prices last year. Annual numbers should post soon for 2007...

It makes me really dizzy. It's one thing not to think of our politicians as justice oriented, but to think of how political our judges are -- it's a level of undermining the authority in this country I simply don't know how to reconcile.

Justice. A justice. Language again -- just the title "justice" trains us from the beginning of our education to expect good from them.

I am thinking this morning -- what if everyone walked around as the personification of their job -- that which they are charged to impart. We could call a teacher "a knowledge," a doctor could be, rather than a healer, "a healing." A poet would have to be called " a truth." Geez I'm glad that's not my title. We argue about the nature of truth all the time...

What can we really expect of each other? What can we really expect from them?

Footprint on the Delta

When hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, there were lots of ideas about what happened to expand the devastation and why -- neglect, indifference, abandon. I learned this morning that a lot of the destruction had to do with that state's oil industry.


blogs.abcnews.com
while this image is posted on the ABC new site, it's not attributed.

Some mornings I come across an article so good I just want to post it -- offer it up or pretend I wrote it and that I am a reporter for the New York Times instead of a poet with a research project... today is one of those mornings. I even found an article in the London Telegraph which does just (pretends it wrote it) (funnily enough, I found the article after I wrote that first sentence...). ((It's worth noting here that this article is an Associated Press article -- it's stellar reporting, quotes and depth are offered entirely un-bilined. When people begin to get down on the media, they should please remember the amazing work that our reporters do everyday -- not for credit or glamor, but for belief in the job and for public service.))

To start, I didn't know how huge the LA oil industry is (remember, it's my responsibility to be entirely shameless here...)

In oil's heyday 30 years ago, Louisiana's coastal wells pumped 360 million barrels a year, an eighth of what Saudi Arabia ships to the market today.

I didn't know the marsh lands of Louisiana provide natural protection from Hurricanes -- and have been decimated -- in at least some large part by the state's oil industry. Swamp erosion, toxic waste and rerouting of water have all lead to completely overturning the nature of the region.

R. Eugene Turner, an LSU oceanographer, has calculated that every square mile of the delta is bounded on three sides by oil-canal ridges. Turner has spent more than 30 years studying the oil industry's footprint on the delta.

''If the water is blocked from going in, the wetlands on other side is drier for a little longer and also stays flooded longer than it otherwise would be,'' Turner said. ''By drying it, the land oxidizes and dries out; and if it's wetter, it's like leaving a lawn sprinkler on and the plants are going to die.''

I'm thinking, too, about that "oil-rich" distinction which is spreading like wildfire through the news these days ... What if every time there were reporting on LA -- or every time there had been reporting on Katrina it had been preceded by that adjectival clause?

This from a times article from 2005 -- DOCTORED

The Gulf Coast has always been vulnerable to coastal storms, but over the years people have made things worse, particularly in the oil-rich state of Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina struck yesterday.

Since the 18th century, when French colonial administrators required land claimants to establish ownership by building levees along bayous, streams and rivers, people have been trying to dominate the region's oil-rich landscape and the forces of its nature.

There's a whole site dedicated to "protecting Louisiana's Citizens and Environment from the Effects of Oil Spills."



If you see spilled oil, the law requires you to make two (toll-free) calls:
(1) Call the 24-hour Louisiana Emergency Hazardous Materials Hotline at (877) 925-6595
(2) Call the National Response Center (NRC) at (800) 424-8802

I keep trying to imagine sentences from the web site substituted for Boston or finished with "in Boston" like that kid's game where you finish movie titles with the phrase "in bed..."

· Minimize unauthorized discharges of oil in Boston
· Provide for an effective spill response in Boston
· Compensate the public for damages to the state’s natural resources in Boston
· Assist the public through education, service, and public outreach in Boston

None of that would ever be an issue. We don't have the resources. We also have a lot of power up here, inside of all these brick buildings... for crying out loud one of our countries best senators is standing in the way of wind energy to protect his family's view of the Cape Cod coast!

Money, Power. "Who Owns The Oil." Not the people living in the toxic waste areas -- not in Nigeria and not here. There seems to be no end to the proof of the devastation people cause by their greed and plundering of the earth.

For The Birds

A new study is looking at long-term effects of oil spills, as monitored through birds.

"Seagull blood shows promise for monitoring pollutants from oil spills," according to a new study from the American Chemical Society. Following seagulls months and years after oil spills, a group of scientists is marking the rise in pollutants in the birds' blood. Among other things, these pollutants (Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) are known to cause cancer and damage DNA. I dont' think I knew DNA could be damaged...

While oil spills quickly kill large numbers of seabirds and other animals, scientists do not fully understand the non-lethal biological effects of these spills, the Spanish researchers say.

The article in the ACM journal opened with that canary in a coal mine metaphor, again. Since I first wrote about that phrase last fall, I've seen it come up over and over again. Language travels through society like birds -- flocking and gathering and crying through the air.

This new study is crucial, of course. We look at things in such a short term perspective, we forget to look out, into the future and the past for understanding.

At the same time, while I think this will certainly prove an important study, there seems something so off with the way we look at and talk about these things. The birds -- the birds are not dying to show us when we are killing ourselves... we are killing the birds!


Photo from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.

When the Cosco Busa cargo ship spilled 58,000 gallons of oil off San Francisco bay two months ago, within a week over 1,500 birds were dead or dying from the effects. While I have been familiar with photos of oil covered birds for decades, I didn't really know what the actual effects were -- I guess I thought the birds would then suffocate. I still imagine that's part of it -- but more. They lose their waterproofing. (Another irony...) They become incapable of faring cold and water. Listen to rescue workers discuss the scene on NPR here.

It is an overwhelming disconnect -- this one between us and the life -- the earth life -- we are part of. The overwhelming disconnect. As ever, when I feel that drowning in the person-ness we live in, I turn to poems.


Eagle Poem

by Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadly growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright �© 1990 by Joy Harjo. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
From the Poetry Foundation Website.

We Don't Need Another Hero

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin gave hero awards to three scientists who planted a Russian flag under the ice at the North Pole.

There's a land squabble, and the award was granted in part simply for supporting the country's claim to the land, which may rest over as much as 25% of the worlds untapped oil. The AP story said:

The issue has become more urgent with growing evidence that global warming is shrinking polar ice -- opening up resource development and new shipping lanes.

Some days, the irony of the world needs no comment.

Sow's Ear

I guess I knew there were farm beauty pageants -- or at least I used to know. I grew up in some pretty rural places -- still, I'm pretty sure I never saw or imagined true pig primping.

From today's Times:

As Jamie Brozman was sizing up her heifer last week, her main objective was to de-emphasize the animal's bulging shoulders by giving her coat a closer shave.

''It's really an art form, like sculpting,'' said Brozman, from the Just Enuff Angus farm in Nazareth. She spoke over the din of electric hair clippers and blow dryers that resembled distant cousins of wet-dry vacuums.

link

After the hogs are bathed, an oil-based gloss is applied to make their coats shiny, he said.

''You're not trying to hide something -- you just want to make them look as good as you can,'' McConaughey said. ''It's like these beauty products that are sold to the ladies.'

A make up artist chat room I stumbled upon said that oil-based products last longer and cover better. Which makes sense -- except that they completely bock your pours and one would have to imagine asphyxiate your skin.

In Ancient Egypt, according to a random, uncorroborated website, oil-based eye make up was used by both men and women -- both for appearance and for prevention of eye infection -- apparently common there and then.

I also did not know that mineral oil is petroleum based. This is disturbing to me. When I was younger I used to go to Miami Beach with my cousin -- she would cover her whole body in mineral oil and tan all week. Mineral oil smells like vacation to me -- though I have to say, those trips were filled with tantrums and jellyfish, so maybe just as well to throw it out.

I didn't mean to be talking about make up -- I meant to be talking about pigs -- silk purse sows ear all that -- how bizarre to imagine a room full of overall-clad farmers smearing oil all over a pig to make it shiny.

But it's all the same, isn't it -- it's like we want to laminate everyone and everything -- preserve, shine... with breathing being not quite so high on the list.

Boundaries 2

I'm still thinking about boundaries -- about where they exist and don't.

The Oil Drum reported,
Today, someone in the NYMEX pit session paid $100 a barrel for front month crude oil.

That just means the price didn't stay there, but it got there. Big Deal (as in it is -- as in, it's no.)
The article on Bloomberg said:

``This is the culmination of everything that we talked about last year,'' said John Kilduff, vice president of risk management at MF Global Ltd. in New York. ``Various geopolitical problems have deteriorated overnight, in particular Nigeria and Pakistan. Commodities, and in particular oil, have become safe havens in a dangerous world.''
Nigeria, The Middle East, Venezuela... And: Prices rose 2.9 percent last week partly because of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former prime minister. Pakistan borders Iran, which holds the world's second- biggest oil reserves, and is located along the Arabian Sea, where tankers travel before entering the Persian Gulf.

These things between us -- between here and there, you and me, up and down -- I'm much more interested in the way we travel over, and yet these markers seem to hold some undeniable psychological weight. It's not at all unlike New Year's day itself, really -- here we are, it's all the same as it was yesterday...

Passage over Water

by Robert Duncan

We have gone out in boats upon the sea at night,

lost, and the vast waters close traps of fear about us.

The boats are driven apart, and we are alone at last

under the incalculable sky, listless, diseased with stars.

Let the oars be idle, my love, and forget at this time

our love like a knife between us

defining the boundaries that we can never cross

nor destroy as we drift into the heart of our dream,

cutting the silence, slyly, the bitter rain in our mouths

and the dark wound closed in behind us.

Forget depth-bombs, death and promises we made,

gardens laid waste, and, over the wastelands westward,

the rooms where we had come together bombd.

But even as we leave, your love turns back. I feel

your absence like the ringing of bells silenced. And salt

over your eyes and the scales of salt between us. Now,

you pass with ease into the destructive world.

There is a dry crash of cement. The light fails,

falls into the ruins of cities upon the distant shore

and within the indestructible night I am alone.

link to the Poetry Foundation Archive
Robert Duncan, “Passage over Water” from Selected Poems. Copyright 1950 by Robert Duncan. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.